Extension given to cut prison population

FEDERAL COURT

Published 4:18 pm, Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A federal court has given California an extra six months, until the end of the year, to lower its prison population by 9,000 more inmates in order to ease overcrowding and its impact on health care behind bars.

The three-judge court took no action, however, on Gov. Jerry Brown's challenge to the court's insistence on reducing the inmate population any further than it already has, an order that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 2011. Brown contends prison health care already meets constitutional standards and further population reductions are both unnecessary and potentially dangerous.

The judges said Tuesday that state lawyers haven't followed the procedures needed to present their argument to the court, and gave them two more weeks to do so.

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The court, based in San Francisco, ruled in 2009 that overcrowding in California's 33 state prisons, then filled to nearly twice their designed capacity, was the main reason that inmate health care was so dismal that it violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The court ordered the state to lower the population by 33,000 inmates, to 110,000, by this June 30. After an unsuccessful Supreme Court appeal, Brown has reduced the population by 24,000 with his realignment program, which sent lower-level felons to county jail rather than state prison.

The population has leveled off, however, and state officials say they can't go further without reducing some felony sentences. Brown declared Jan. 8 that health care was now legally adequate and it was time to transfer management of the prison medical system back to the state, ending a federal receivership that a member of the three-judge panel had ordered in 2006.

The court-appointed receiver, J. Clark Kelso, disagreed with Brown in a report last Friday, saying prison conditions have improved but still do not meet constitutional standards, and overcrowding remains a problem. Lawyers for the inmates say that further population reductions would not be dangerous and note the state has classified more than 40 percent of its prisoners as low-risk.

The court did not address the population-limit issue in Tuesday's order, noting only that state officials have said they could not meet the target level of 110,000 inmates by June 30 but should be able to do so by Dec. 31. The judges left the population order in effect, at least for now.

The court appears to be "bending over backwardsto make sure the state has enough time to comply," said attorney Donald Specter of the nonprofit Prison Law Office, which represents the inmates.